I've already told you that Verizon customers can seek refunds for cramming charges that you unknowingly paid on your phone bills. Scammed customers also may be able to recoup more money if the feds win this fight.

Billing Services Group, known as BSG, should be forced to refund $52 million for placing bogus charges on the phone bills of nearly 1.2 million people "on behalf of a serial phone crammer," the Federal Trade Commission alleges.

The agency has asked a federal judge to find the firm in contempt for violating a previous agreement that prohibited unauthorized billing.

"BSG made it possible for con artists to steal people's hard-earned money by placing charges on phone bills for services they never ordered or used," FTC director David Vladeck said in a news release. "Under previous federal court orders, BSG cannot profit from the fraud of others and then deny responsiblity for the harm they made possible."

Cramming occurs when your phone bill includes charges you didn't authorize from companies other than your phone company. They can range from phone-related services such as voicemail to nearly anything else, such as diet plans. How the charges get on your phone bill is a complicated story, but suffice it to say that it's legal and is all about money. If you want to know more about how it works, read this column I wrote last month.

BSG is a billing aggregator, meaning it is hired by other companies to handle their billing, which they do by contracting with phone companies to have the charges placed on phone bills.

In this case, authorities say BSG placed charges for "enhanced services" such as voicemail and streaming video, from third-party companies on phone bills of people who never authorized the charges or used the services. Authorities say BSG failed to investigate whether the charges were legitimate despite being swamped with complaints from people who alleged they were not.

In a statement, BSG said it is being wrongly blamed for the actions of someone else. It said the government's motion for contempt "represents an incomplete and inaccurate representation of the facts and leaps to false conclusions."

"The FTC plainly misunderstands BSG’s business, and declined our invitation to meet with them about our due diligence processes before filing its motion in March," the statement says. "BSG has fought hard to stop crammers since our incorporation 23 years ago. We have a strict protocol in place to thwart cramming, including a 100-point review process that all businesses must go through before we allow them to bill any customers, monthly performance evaluations, and a thorough review of all customer inquiries. Our process includes pre-screening vendors, authenticating charges and testing to confirm the authenticity of charges. We believe in the effectiveness of our due diligence processes, which have reduced reports of cramming to extraordinarily low levels."

The Federal Communications Commission is getting aggressive against cramming and recently enacted new rules to prevent it. Major phone companies also finally have acknowledged the problems with allowing their bills to contain charges from outside companies, as Verizon and AT&T recently announced they no longer would be including those charges on their land-line phone bills.

Make sure to read your phone bills carefully. If you see charges that don't look right, call your phone company. If you believe you were crammed, you can seek help from the FTC or the FCC.